NIT announces 16-team tournament, which gives MSU a fallback option

The National Invitation Tournament is back — and perhaps just in time to extend Michigan State's season, if things go sour in the coming week.

The NCAA announced Monday the NIT, which is the second postseason tournament to the NCAA Tournament, will be played this season after being canceled last year amid the early stages of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The tournament will have 16 teams, down from the typical 32, and be played entirely in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Games will be played at Comerica Center in Frisco, Texas, and UT Coliseum in Denton, Texas, home of North Texas.

The tournament will begin Wednesday, March 17, with the championship game set for Sunday, March 28. There also will be a third-place game for the first time since 2003, and all games will be on ESPN or ESPN2.

The NIT, college basketball's oldest tournament which was founded in 1938, serves as a fallback postseason for teams that find themselves on the wrong side of the bubble, or mid-major regular-season champions that lose in conference tournaments. This year, the entire field will be at-large picks.

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Michigan State (13-10, 7-10 Big Ten) has clawed its way back in the NCAA Tournament discussion with wins over then-No. 4 Ohio State and then-No. 5 Illinois, but lost to Maryland on Sunday and faces Indiana once and No. 2 Michigan twice this week. A one-win-or-less week that doesn't include beating Michigan at least once means the Spartans likely will need a run in the Big Ten tournament to extend its NCAA Tournament streak to 23 years.

Michigan State coach Tom Izzo has made the postseason every season, his first two in the NIT, and then the streak of 22 NCAAs.

Michigan won the NIT in 1984 and 2004.

The NIT bracket will unveiled at 8:30 Sunday, March 14, following the reveal of the NCAA Tournament bracket. Each team will have the option to accept or reject the bid, of course, and there could be more rejections than in a typical year, given all the COVID-19 protocols, and everything team's already have gone through this year. Michigan State went through a 20-day pause in January.

tpaul@detroitnews.com

Twitter: @tonypaul1984